helplessness. Moreover
he was in dread that if he persisted in his disagreement O'Brien would
twist the dial again. And yet he could not keep silent. Feebly, without
arguments, with nothing to support him except his inarticulate horror of
what O'Brien had said, he returned to the attack.
'I don't know -- I don't care. Somehow you will fail. Something will
defeat you. Life will defeat you.'
'We control life, Winston, at all its levels. You are imagining that
there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do
and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely
malleable. Or perhaps you have returned to your old idea that the
proletarians or the slaves will arise and overthrow us. Put it out of your
mind. They are helpless, like the animals. Humanity is the Party. The
others are outside -- irrelevant.'
'I don't care. In the end they will beat you. Sooner or later they
will see you for what you are, and then they will tear you to pieces.'
'Do you see any evidence that that is happening? Or any reason why it
should?'
'No. I believe it. I know that you will fail. There is something in
the universe -- I don't know, some spirit, some principle -- that you will
never overcome.'
'Do you believe in God, Winston?'
'No.'
'Then what is it, this principle that will defeat us?'
'I don't know. The spirit of Man.'
'And do you consider yourself a man?.'
'Yes.'
'If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man. Your kind is
extinct; we are the inheritors. Do you understand that you are alone? You
are outside history, you are non-existent.' His manner changed and he said
more harshly: 'And you consider yourself morally superior to us, with